Justice Department's Overreaching on Leaks Threatens Freedom of the Press

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/22-2



A week after the Department of Justice notified the Associated Press that it had secretly seized records for more than 20 phone lines in a leak investigation, The Washington Post uncovered an overlooked search warrant in another leak case that raises similar – and perhaps more serious – constitutional concerns.

The Post reported that in 2010, an FBI counterespionage agent obtained a sealed search warrant for access to the Gmail account of James Rosen, Fox News's chief Washington correspondent. The agent also pulled records from the State Department showing Rosen's comings and goings, as well as telephone records showing phone numbers, times, and durations of calls. The various records and emails were sought as part of a leak investigation into a June 2009 story Rosen wrote reporting that North Korea would conduct a nuclear test in response to a critical United Nations resolution.

Stephen Kim, an analyst with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is now under indictment for that leak. He has pled not guilty, and his case is one of the six ongoing leak investigations under the Obama administration (twice as many cases as have ever been prosecuted under all previous administrations combined).

The warrant application was unsealed back in November 2011, but it's only with the controversy swirling around the administration's uniquely aggressive stance on national security leaks to the media that the Post discovered and reported on the Fox investigation.

[BlueCaliDem]

1. Bullshit.

And if there's a threat, it's toward the sneaky usurpers of our democracy and fourth estate's rights to spew pro-corporate propaganda - and that's a good thing.